In industry, equipment components such as, for example, bearings, gears and motors are frequently monitored using sensors as part of the maintenance and repair regime. The monitoring is intended to indicate, for example, the current condition of the equipment component or to predict malfunctions/defects in order to avoid equipment downtimes or enable repair work to be scheduled in good time. For the purposes of monitoring, the signals supplied by the sensors are evaluated cyclically or continuously. It is not always possible to define in advance at what time intervals the respective measuring signal of a sensor has to be evaluated.
A device and a method for regulating power output are known from U.S. Pat. No. 5,177,695. In this, characteristics of a transmission function of a system for regulating power output are adjusted dynamically, whereby a sampling rate of output values of the power output regulator is variable. If an operationally non-critical change in an output value is determined compared with the preceding output value, then the sampling rate is reduced.